Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Einstein is famous for figuring out how to space into time–but the joke was on him, because joke writers already knew how.

Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) details a million tricks comic artists use to translate a series of still photos into a story with action, suspense, and pacing. And, for those of us with our minds in the gutter, in McCloud’s world that’s just the space between 2 panels, and just the place your mind does its best work.

Stand-up comics live or die by their timing. One of the space-time tricks of written humor is making the reader wait for a riddle’s answer. That’s because the wait, the pause, the time the reader spends trying to guess how it turns out, is as important to making the riddle funny as the quality of the joke itself.

But you know that trick–you’ve seen it a million times. And to figure it out, you don’t have to be Einstein….

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On the first day of creation, God created the dog.

On the second day of creation, God created man,
so that man might serve the dog.

On the third day, God created all other animals of the earth
to serve as potential food for the dog.

On the fourth day, God created honest toil
so that man could labor for the good of the dog.

On the fifth day, God created the tennis ball
so that the dog might or might not retrieve it.

On the sixth day, God created veterinary science
to keep the dog healthy and the man broke.

On the seventh day, God wanted to rest……
but He had to walk the dog.

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In honor of poor Halley’s wounded foot, let’s remember that hobbling around can be quite glamorous.

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I once met a man with a sense of adventure–
He was dressed to thrill wherever he went–
He said, “Let’s make love on a mountain top
Under the stars on a big hard rock”
I said, “In these shoes?
I don’t think so.”
I said, “Honey, let’s do it here.”

So I’m sitting at a bar in Guadalajara
In walks a guy with a faraway look in his eyes
He said, “I’ve got as powerful horse outside
Climb on the back, I’ll take you for a ride
I know a little place, we can get there for the break of day.”
I said, “In these shoes?
No way, Jose.”
I said, “Honey, let’s stay right here.”

No le gusta caminar–no puede montar a caballo.
Como se puede bailar? Es un escandolo.*

Then I met an Englishman
“Oh” he said,
“Won’t you walk up and down my spine?
It makes me feel strangely alive.”
I said, “In these shoes?
I doubt you’d survive.”
I said, “Honey, let’s do it.
Let’s stay right here.”

No le gusta caminar–no puede montar a caballo.
Como se puede bailar? Es un escandolo.

…………………..
* She doesn’t like to walk–she can’t ride a horse–how can she dance? It’s a scandal.

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In light of the news of so-called human cloning, my friend Joel Cohen asks an important philosophical question:

If you pushed your naked clone off the top of a tall building, would it be:

A) murder
B) suicide
C) merely making an obscene clone fall

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Christopher Moore just came out with a new book, and if that doesn’t stir you, let me remind you of some of Moore’s previous titles:

• Island of the Sequined Love Nun
• The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

In addition to fine books and zingy titles, Moore wrote my favorite author’s disclaimer ever.* I can’t wait for paperback to read
Fluke : Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings.

I’m buying two hardcovers in a week? Moore and Harry Potter put a spell on me.

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*”If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this story sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions….”

Chistopher Moore, Lamb

“When people throw excrement at one another whenever they meet, either verbally or actually, can this be interpreted as a case of wit, or merely written down as a case of throwing excrement? This is the central question of all interpretation.”

Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (1975)

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Picture Galileo, climbing the steps of the leaning tower on a hot Italian summer afternoon. Picture Newton, hiding out under the apple tree and scratching his bugbites as he tries to read. Picture your family doctor, shining that little light up your nose…discovery isn’t pretty. Even my research–trying to figure out what makes people laugh, why some jokes are funnier than others, and who has already said good stuff on this topic–even my research can be ugly.

Some of the world’s most infuriating people have written and written and written about humor. I have one short but cherished list of “Stupid Things Smart People Have Said About Humor”, and one of my favorites is the little gem above from Mary Douglas, an anthropologist studying tribal joke rituals.

So imagine my horror when I came across that very quote in a scholarly book about “everyday conversation.” Somebody else had already made the joke I was planning to make–somebody had beaten me to the laugh at this utterly humorless “insight” into humor. Then, to my relief, I realized the author was quoting Douglas approvingly. Woo hoo! I still have my joke!

Frank Paynter has been taking the piss out of postmodern criticism, bless him. Pity me, Frank–I have to read this stuff, because most modern literary theory is written in this tangled, PC, complex, language that you have to read three times before you are really sure that what the paragraph says is 1) obvious, 2) bullshit or 3) (much less often) useful. Here’s a short sample, from Salamansky himself (herself? none-of-your-goddamn-business-what-my-gender-is-self?):

“However, in Heidegger’s formulation, Rede, the rhetorically “correct,” strives toward systematics of exclusivity and closure in its attempt to screen out as much heteroglossia and dialogism as possible for the sake of clarity–to hone language, if it were possible, to monoglossia, to limit its bricolage of genres and narrative levels. A police officer for instance, making an arrest, is unlikely to wax poetic or relate deep-seated childhood traumas to the accused.”

S.I. Salamensky, Talk Talk Talk: The Cultural Life of Everyday Conversation (2001)

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Wow! I woke up Friday morning to discover that Frank Paynter has published our email interview! I quickly dashed off this mini-response, then raced out the door to catch my flight to Colorado without noticing I never posted it to the home page.

Now I’m sitting in a Kinko’s in Boulder…expect mile-high blogging when I return, and jet-lagged garble at this very moment.

Thanks to Frank for being so interested–and so interesting himself.

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You Live in California when…
1. You make $250,000 a year and can’t afford to buy a four-bedroom house.
2. The high school quarterback calls time-out to answer his cell phone.
3. You drive a rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
4. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
5. The fastest part of your daily commute is backing down your driveway.

You Live in New York City when…
1. You say “the city” and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.
2. You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map.
4. You think Central Park is “nature,”
5. You know eye contact is an act of aggression.

You Live in Maine when…
1. You have only four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

You Live in the Deep South when…
1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
2. You know “y’all” is singular–“all y’all” is the plural.
3. After five years you still hear, “You ain’t from ’round here, are Ya?”
4. All the people you know have 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, etc.
5. “He needed killin’ ” is a valid defense.

You Live in Colorado when…
1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.
2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and he stops at the day care center.
3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
4. The top of your head may be bald, but you have a pony tail.
5. Your hometown bus lines are named “Hop”, “Skip” and “Jump.”

You Live in the Midwest when…
1. You’ve never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
3. You have had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” on the same day.
4. You end sentences with a preposition: “Where’s my coat at?”
5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, “It was different!”

You Live in Florida when…
1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind — even houses and cars.
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.

You Live in Blog-world when…
1. You can’t understand how anyone could mix up Dave Winer with David Weinberger.
2. You check on friends while drinking your morning coffee–and hope none of them make you spit coffee on the keyboard.
3. You type html tags so fast it’s not worth the trouble to copy and paste them.
4. You know just why Andrew Orlowski is wrong.
5. You would love to meet Halley, or you did meet Halley, or you would love to meet some other blogger who has met Halley.

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And speaking of Halley–it is sooooo much fun to go to the movies with her. Go read her lovely inspired bit on the magic of 60s New York City space-time.

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If a man says ‘yes’ he means maybe.
If he says ‘maybe’ he means no.
If he says ‘no’–he is no gentleman.

If a woman says ‘no’ she means maybe.
If she says ‘maybe’ she means yes.
If she says ‘yes’–she is no lady.

This was a favorite joke of Paul Dirac (1902-1984), a brilliant physicist so shy that his Cambridge colleagues coined a unit, the dirac, to stand for the smallest measurable quantum of speech. Dirac was what I call an Aleph male–distracted from Alpha ambitions by his private obsessions.

I met Dirac and his wonderful wife Moncie the summer before his 80th birthday. There is a famous summer school for physics in the little hilltown of Sicily known as Erice. I was a young physics wife, quite visibly pregnant. (Just one year before, my bottom was pinched black-and-blue by Sicilian men, but my little round belly got me treated me like a queen.)

I have a nerdy fondness for learning languages, so I served as an amateur guide to physicists who didn’t speak any Italian. I was delighted to be the chosen companion of a Nobel laureate for an hour or two, even if our mutual goal was to buy him some shoes. Professor Dirac was courteous but shy–and when he smiled, he had a wonderfully naughty twinkle in his eye.

I thought Moncie was a very lucky woman.

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Frank Paynter When asked how he had discovered the law of universal gravitation, he said: “ By thinking on it continually.”

xxx

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